Nearing the End

It's almost the end of my Junior Year at college. Its a little insane to think about. I can still clearly remember a lot of events from Freshmen year, and next year will be my last here in undergrad land. It's crazy.

This school year has been really surprising for me, the fall semester was probably the hardest I've ever had (probably the two grad level classes I took that did it) but extremely rewarding, I learned Matlab from one of those course and got a reputation as the one to go to for Matlab help because of the 'throw you off into the deep' approach of my professor. From that course I worked with two grad students and got a paper accepted to GECCO, and one of the grad students is off to present it over the break, therefore getting it, and me, published.

I got to be lectured by one of the most prestigious roboticist of today, Josh Bongard. He's an amazing lecturer, and a solid guy. Gives good suggestions for projects and stuff to (he suggested a 2-1/2d mode for the wiimote that I want to do but dont have time). He's really cool. Anyway....

The fall semester was willed with rediculous amounts of work and frustration, but then after the break, things took a change for the better. I started dating a wonderful girl whose made this semester seem to fly by as I looked forward to seeing her every few weeks when she visited. Its pretty amazing how having someone that's important to you can motivate you to do a bunch of work at once so you don't have to do it later that way you can hang out with them when they visit.... wow that was a long winded sentence and could probably have been reduced... anywho.

This semester has been a juggling act, too many classes, or rather, one class with an inconvenient amount of busy work (physics) that really caused my other classes to have to play catch up every now and then and such. I was lucky that my professor for my Differential Equations class doesn't collect homework, and allows open book and open notes on tests. Which makes sense becuase in the real world you're going to have tools at your disposal, its not like your boss expects you to know the integral of sinh of the top of your head (its cosh btw)

Overall though, the semester has been rewarding, an independent study I had is wrapping up and I did a minimal amount of work and managed to make a good number of connections with professors along the way, which was really nice. I learned alot about multi-threaded programming by doing my Crew project with the Wiimote and creating a smartboard.

Oh good lord, its 4:15 in the morning... I accidently got side tracked from writing this blog about 2 hours ago by my friend and I exploring the wonders of functional programming. Ruby is such a cool language.

I must go to bed now or else I'm so screwed for tomorrow.

The volume of the next day and a half

Vast for writing my research paper. Silence for studying for Physics. Yelling dorm dumbies for sleeping. Groaning for waking up at 7am to register for classes. Silence for studying for physics. Holding my breath for room selection. Silence for the physics test. Sighing afterward. Talking for studying for diff eq. The Volume from now until tomorrows done is gonna oscillate just like an LC Circuit

Short piece I wrote for an english class about immigrants and tuition costs

America! The land of the free, where hopes and dreams can be realized and a capitalistic melting pot enables anyone to bootstrap themselves into stardom! For generations, this land has been home to a variety of people, immigration has been a key to our success as a nation.  We've won wars because we've had the right people in our pocket at the time (Enrico Fermi). Our people are better educated readers thanks to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Even the struggle against AIDS is better off in America courtesy of Dr. David Ho.

 Immigrants are a wonderful thing! So why don't Americans want a new bill to be passed that would make certain immigrants to be given a "standard tuition" deal for going to school in America? Oh right, because by certain immigrants, I mean illegal immigrants. What people like Senator Rollie Heath(member of the Colorado House of Representatives) don't understand is the concept of what an illegal immigrant is. Let me stress this, an immigrant to this country is someone who has a green card or some form of paperwork that permits them to act on (mostly) equal conditions to a citizen of whatever country they've migrated to. An illegal immigrant lacks this paperwork, and have somehow smuggled themselves into the country. In most countries this is grounds for deportation, or during wartime, death(Maybe not so much today, but during World War II it was shoot then ask questions). How a foolish Senator from Colorado, who I imagine must have some degree of education in the political realm, and therefore, the law, managed to miss the very concept of what an illegal immigrant is astounds me. Senator Scott Renfroe seems to understand this, as he clearly has stated: "...do you want to give someone that's here illegally this (benefit?"http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci\_19944238)

The original bill proposed that illegal immigrants should receive the same tuition rate as in-state tuition, the revised bill which Renfroe and Heath were asked about suggests a rate higher than in-state but still lower than out-of-state tuition rates. This is wrong on multiple levels. Not only does this support illegal immigrants in the U.S.A. but also implicitly suggests that out of state students are less valuable than out of country students, and more-so than that, illegal out of country students.  Why illegal immigrants are allowed to study at an American education system is beyond me.  I was led to believe that if you were an illegal immigrant you should be deported, as you had no right to be here. The original bill was even more preposterous, in-state tuition cost should be only allowed for students who are residents of the state. According to the process of naturalization(The process which non-citizens become citizens), a legal resident may become a citizen. Note that the keyword in this sentence is legal. Illegal immigrants, by definition have no legal title of residency, if they have no residency they should never qualify for any type of educational funding given to residents.

How anyone can refute this argument is beyond me. As an out-of-state college student I find it enraging that someone who isn't a resident of anywhere in this nation could qualify for something that I, as a full fledged adult of this country, can not. There should be no special treatment just because you managed to make it into the country without being caught. Rewarding someone for disobeying laws completely disregards any sort of commonsense. To beat the dead horse, if you are an illegal immigrant you are illegal and should be deported. The exact of opposite is what this bill suggests, the bill suggests that if you can sneak into America and evade deportation long enough to enroll into an institution you should be rewarded- Allowed to stay and learn. If you want to study in America that bad that you risk everything you have for it, then come through the proper channels and don't do something that instantly labels you a criminal of the nation.

Some may consider my opinion harsh.They may argue that this nation was built on the people who boot-strapped themselves into prosperity. But I hold this opinion for all immigrants. My mother is an immigrant with a green card. She's never tried to go back to school here in America, but if she did I would expect her to pay for whatever residency requirement tuition there was, whether it be an out of state cost, or some type of non-citizen tuition cost. If you're going to allow non-residents access to cheaper schooling why wouldn't you just standardize the entire institution? It's unfair to the American people that education should be more readily accessible to illegal immigrants. If this country cares about its future this foolish and outlandish notion of an instate or standardized tution of illegals must be stopped.

Seriously, illegal immigration is a large problem for many nations, there is no need to encourage such acts with promises of education. If an illegal immigrant comes to this country they should be deported. Simple as that. They should not be given the same rights as a citizen of this country. This may sound harsh, especially considering that America was born out of immigration to this country,  the words "all men are equal" are a motto, and everyone deserves to make their own future. But those ideals hold for citizens of this country and those people who immigrate legally. If someone smuggled themselves into this country they should not be taken in like the prodigal son.